take your answer off the air...

Talker's MagazineThe quirky talk radio trade mag. Check the Talk Radio Research Project- it's not very scientific, but places on the top 15 talkers list (scroll down to Talk Radio Audiences By Size)) are as hotly contested as Emmys (and mean just about as much).

The AdvocateNo, not THAT Advocate... it's the Northwest Progressive Institute's Official Blog.

Media MattersDocumentation of right-wing media in video, audio and text.

Orcinushome of David Neiwert, freelance investigative journalist and author who writes extensively about far-right hate groups

Hominid Views"People, politics, science, and whatnot"
Darryl is a statistician who fights imperialism with empiricism, gives good links and wry commentary.

Jesus' General An 11 on the Manly Scale of Absolute Gender, a 12 on the Heavenly Scale of the 10 Commandments and a 6 on the earthly scale of the Immaculately Groomed.

Irrational Public Radio "informs, challenges, soothes and/or berates, and does so with a pleasing vocal cadence and unmatched enunciation. When you listen to IPR, integrity washes over you like lava, with the pleasing familiarity of a medium-roast coffee and a sensible muffin."

The Moderate VoiceThe voice of reason in the age of Obama, and the politics of the far-middle.

News Hounds Dogged dogging of Fox News by a team who seems to watch every minute of the cable channel so you don't have to.

HistoryLinkFun to read and free encyclopedia of Washington State history. Founded by the late Walt Crowley, it's an indispensable tool and entertainment source for history wonks and surfers alike.

right-wing blogs we like

The Reagan WingHearin lies the real heart of Washington State Republicans. Doug Parris runs this red-meat social conservative group site which bars no holds when it comes to saying who they are and who they're not; what they believe and what they don't; who their friends are and where the rest of the Republicans can go. Well-written, and flaming.

June 17, 2012

Radio's Bryan Fischer tries pushing Romney right

In April, Mitt Romney hired Richard Grenell, an openly gay man, to serve as his campaign's national security spokesman. Within hours, Grenell was being attacked by a Christian radio talk show host named Bryan Fischer, whose Focal Point call-in show reaches more than 1 million listeners a day.

Nine days after Fischer began his on-air attack, Grenell resigned. He had been the only openly gay member of Romney's campaign staff.

The Christian right and Fischer saw Grenell's resignation as a "tremendous victory," says New Yorker staff writer Jane Mayer.

"[Bryan Fischer] feels he and what he calls the 'pro-family' movement managed to hound Romney into pushing an openly gay member of his campaign out because of the fact that he was gay," says Mayer. "So they feel that they've really triumphed on this one."

Grenell said he resigned in part because of the focus on his personal life from both the "far right and the far left." And Romney said he was disappointed Grenell resigned.

Mayer's profile of Fischer, which appears in the current edition of The New Yorker, details how the Christian radio host from Tupelo, Miss., is pushing far-right and anti-gay policy decisions on the Romney campaign and the Republican Party.

"He wants to shape the policy of the Republican Party because he hopes to change America," says Mayer. "He's evangelizing to make America more in line with his biblical views. On his own, he probably defines such far out views that there's a tendency to dismiss him. But what makes Bryan Fischer worth paying some attention to is that he's part of a larger group — a bloc of voters, the evangelical white voters — who have become a very well-organized and very significant part of the Republican Party at this point."

An 'Alternative Universe'

Mayer first became aware of Fischer while in Mississippi covering the Rick Santorum presidential campaign. She tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross that many of Santorum's supporters were "viciously anti-Obama ... not just politically opposed but really worked up about it." She wondered where they were getting their information.

"A number of them said that they loved this talk show host, Bryan Fischer," she says. "That was the first time I had heard of him. So I started tuning into him myself. ... And it was fascinating. And what you begin to realize is that out in the country, there is a completely alternative universe and a completely alternative media universe. And there are even alternative facts that they put out. It is so far to the right, even of Fox, that is just a completely different reality."

Mayer says that Fischer often has like-minded experts on his show who are looked at as outliers within the academic community. One of his favorite guests, Berkeley molecular and cell biology professor Peter Duesberg, has questioned whether HIV causes AIDS. (Fischer has also denied that AIDS is caused by a virus.)

"[Duesberg] is considered almost a pariah within the scientific community because of his views at this point," says Mayer. "But [he is] the person Fischer can turn to and he has an alternative set of facts. He's kind of the last person saying AIDS is caused by other things, by drug use from what they claim is the 'homosexual lifestyle.' "

Other experts come on Fischer's show to debate the theory of evolution.

"In that particular case, it's not a minority view among Republican voters in Mississippi," says Mayer. "Sixty-six percent of the Republican voters in Mississippi don't believe in Darwin's theory of evolution. They believe that the human race was created as is told in Genesis. So Fischer also subscribes to that view and promulgates it and finds experts who agree with that and puts them on the air."

A "Winnable War"

"That's definitely his motto, and his war is to implement biblical law as American law," says Mayer. "He wants the Bible to shape American politics, American law, American government, American values, American culture. That's the fight that he's fighting."

The show is carried and distributed by the American Family Association's radio network, which extends to 200 stations across 35 states. It was founded by Donald Wildmon in 1977 and received national attention in the 1980s and 1990s for boycotting advertisers and stores that sold or supported things the AFA deemed "racy." That included successfully pushing 7-Eleven stores to stop selling Playboy and Penthouse. The AFA later attacked Disney and Home Depot for having employment policies that were gay friendly.

In recent years, Mayer says, the AFA has broadened its reach beyond television shows and advertising campaigns.

"They've really broadened so now they have their own news operation and a production studio where they make movies that are Christian-themed movies for popular consumption," she says.

The AFA is a nonprofit organization, which means it must remain strictly nonpartisan because of its nonprofit status. But Fischer's show is very political, says Mayer.

"He is a very outspoken political voice every single day," she says. "And the way he defines the line legally is that if he doesn't come out and directly endorse a candidate in the 2012 presidential case, then as far as he's concerned he's not breaking the law. So he basically goes out and trashes Obama every day, and he's somewhat critical of Romney — he really liked Santorum, he really liked Rick Perry — but he is a commentator on politics every single day, with very strong opinions. But he stops one inch short of making an actual endorsement."

Issa's a complete zero. He's held 11 congressional hearings on Solyndra. Nothing. He couldn't come up w/ a single charge. In fact, he & his Republican cronies lobbied the Dept of Energy for exactly the same type of government loan for their own districts. Issa, himself, wrote letters to Steven Chiu asking for a green loan.

In 3 & l/2 years, Issa has proven to be a complete dud w/ his cornball investigations. This may be his last chance. Frogmarch Holder or go out without a single kill. It's all he's got.

Selective memory, PS. Number-wise there were enough Dems, but some of them were DINOS like Ben Nelson, and the ridiculous rule of Super Majority allowed things to die in the Senate. Nancy Pelosi got hundreds of bills passed easily in the House, but the majority was not large enough in the Senate to overcome the supermajority and the bills went nowhere. Had they done a simple majority, a lot more would have been accomplished. Right now, with the majority in the House being Republican, and those Republicans vowing to vote against anything President Obama wants ( even bills they originally sponsored) nothing will get done. Which, of course, will be blamed on Obama. Which, oourse, is the plan.

"For years I used to tell everyone that I went into it because my brother was a car thief. Then they found out when I ran for office my brother did spend time in prison as a car thief, and it ruined the whole joke I'd had for 20 years in business," Issa said during an interview with WhoRunsGov.

Issa himself was accused several times of auto theft. In the early 1970s, he and his brother were arrested after police suspected them of stealing a Maserati sports car from a dealership in Cleveland. Issa says the police mistook his identity, and the charges were later dismissed. ISSA SAYS....

Another time, Issa was arrested and eventually pleaded guilty to carrying a concealed weapon. Police found a handgun and a tear-gas gun — plus ammunition for both — in Issa's glove compartment. MAKES YOU WONDER

Questions In The Past

These stories first arose when Issa ran for the Senate in 1998. An investigative reporter named Lance Williams was looking into the then-candidate's biography.

"He had been a soldier, and he claimed that he was part of an elite bomb detecting unit that guarded President Nixon at the 1971 World Series," said Williams. OH BOY

Williams called up the Nixon Presidential Library, and was told that Nixon hadn't gone to any World Series games that year. Then Williams looked into Issa's purportedly stellar career in the Army. LIAR

"The biography that he was providing the press in the context of his campaign was all wrong. He had a bad conduct rating. He was demoted, and a fellow soldier accused him of stealing his car," said Williams. ROFL

Issa eventually took over the company that built car alarms.

Ryan Lizza, a reporter for The New Yorker magazine, detailed Issa's early business moves in a 2011 story.

The Fire

Issa had a warehouse full of electronics that, one night in 1982, caught fire. Investigators later found "suspicious burn patterns," Lizza reported, and found that Issa had done some odd things.

A co-worker claimed that before the fire, Issa had put important electronic prototypes in a fireproof box, and that he'd removed the business's computer and financial files from the building. Investigators also found that less than three weeks before the blaze, Issa had increased the company's fire insurance from $100,000 to more than $400,000. HMMMM

"So you add the more than quadrupling of the insurance along with the taking the computer and putting the other stuff in a fireproof box, and you can see why both the arson investigators and the insurance investigators pointed a finger, you know, at Issa after this fire," said Lizza. SWEET GEEZUS

Issa said he had nothing to do with the fire, but the insurance company refused to pay the claim. The two later settled out of court. WHAT A DICK!

Issa - another fringe Republican. The whole party is fringe and moderate Republicans must be voting for them. What does that tell you?

Hey Preston, you got a bio on Rick Scott, governor in Florida?

Posted by: T-S | June 21, 2012 at 10:05 AM

scott--he's pure evil as well

Posted by: Preston | June 21, 2012 at 11:28 AM

Preston, how do we know you're not evil or a weevil ?Scott is upholding state law and the Federal Government had no business. Holder was being arbitrary and capricious by his actions and shows that he openly supports illegal voters (i.e. voter fraud)

Why in the world are you defending this corrupt AG ?
He encourages voter fraud, lawlessness, cheating, letting terrorists out of Gitmo and a President who wants to be a dick-tator. C'mon - progressives your brains are fried - put down the bong and face reality.

Issa, if anything has been too soft on Mr. Holder, the worst AG since John Mitchell.

KVI am 570 KHz Visit the burnt-out husk of one of the seminal right-wing talkers in all the land. Here's where once trilled the reactionary tones of Rush Limbaugh, John Carlson, Kirby Wilbur, Mike Siegel, Peter Weissbach, Floyd Brown, Dinky Donkey, and Bryan Suits.
Now it's Top 40 hits from the '60's & '70's aimed at that diminishing crowd who still remembers them and can still hear.

KTTH am 770 KHzRight wing home of local, and a whole bunch of syndicated righties such as Glennn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Michael Medved, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Lars Larsony, and for an hour a day: live & local David Boze.